> It's not harmful to watch Alex Jones videos, lizard people videos, deep state conspiracy videos. This premise should be rejected outright.
That's an open question - whether conspiracy videos have a negative effect. Given the current state of research in psychology, political science and communication research, it seems plausible that they do have a negative effect, albeit a small one.
The defining feature of conspiracy theories is mistrust in state institutions and elites. Such attitudes - while legally protected - can lead to people rejecting sensible and helpful behavior, including vaccinations [1].
So given the current state of research, I do not think the premise should be rejected outright.
You are selectively highlighting part of the comment.
The full context is that it should be rejected outright IF other forms of harmful information are allowed to remain.
Any selective enforcement of this nature is insincere because it blatantly ignores more harmful examples.
If there is a comprehensive enforcement that treats all harmful content equally, it can be considered sincere, else it is simply politics. These are not minor examples, they are far more dangerous than the examples being cited in this study.
I agree with you, but I think I and most people wouldn't view astrology videos anywhere near as harmful as any of the other videos mentioned. Could you link one or two videos that you consider to be presenting information as harmful as the other things you listed?
For things like homeopathy and other medical pseudoscience, I think a lot of those things do get banned, depending on the claims they're presenting.
And for something like a video recommending you invest in the video creator's company because [astrology gibberish], I think in that case it's just a matter of magnitude. Of course such a video causes harm, but YouTube can't be expected to be able to prevent all levels of harm. Your argument is sound when you're comparing against things that many would agree are at least as harmful as the other examples you give, rather than just meeting the criteria of any level of harmfulness.
You are using the term "homeopathy", which includes osteopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic treatments, and other "holistic" areas of treatment.
Homeopathy is a very broad area, and some of it isn't just pseudoscience, although we may not yet know the mechanism of operation for some of the 'treatments' (and some are almost certainly actively harmful).
It's probably a weak analogy, but homeopathy is to medicine as supplements are to FDA-approved pharmaceuticals. There's always going to be some crazies, but there will also be some good things there, too, and by banning it, we will miss out on some really good innovation and ideas.
>Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a disease in healthy people can cure similar symptoms in sick people; this doctrine is called similia similibus curentur, or "like cures like".
I think homeopathy just applies to the pseudoscientific/fake "like cures like" dilution method. The broad category is just known as "alternative medicine", I believe. Some other forms of alternative medicine aren't necessarily quite as baseless.
> You are using the term "homeopathy", which includes osteopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic treatments, and other "holistic" areas of treatment.
> Homeopathy is a very broad area …
Homeopathy is a specific system of “alternative medicine” that involves treating “like with like” – albeit in dilutions that no longer contain the active ingredient. It has little in common with acupuncture or chiropractic which have very different origins and belief systems – other than they are all pseudo-scientific and are broadly categorised as complementary or alternatives to mainstream, evidence-based medicine.
That's an open question - whether conspiracy videos have a negative effect. Given the current state of research in psychology, political science and communication research, it seems plausible that they do have a negative effect, albeit a small one.
The defining feature of conspiracy theories is mistrust in state institutions and elites. Such attitudes - while legally protected - can lead to people rejecting sensible and helpful behavior, including vaccinations [1].
So given the current state of research, I do not think the premise should be rejected outright.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/19485506209346...